British Minister Concedes Sympathy to Murdoch TV Bid

LONDON — With his career in the balance, Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt said at a judicial inquiry into the British media on Thursday that he had been personally sympathetic to a bid by Rupert Murdoch to take over Britain’s most lucrative pay-television network, but that he did not act with improper bias.

Mr. Hunt, 45, was responsible for overseeing the regulatory processes for the $12 billion bid for the 61 percent of the British Sky Broadcasting network, or BSkyB, that Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation did not already own, and held the ultimate authority to approve it. Last July, Mr. Murdoch withdrew the bid amid widespread outrage over the phone hacking scandal, which has enveloped two newspapers in Mr. Murdoch’s British stable and shaken his global media empire.

At the inquiry, headed by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, Mr. Hunt faced intense questioning over an extensive archive of e-mails, phone calls, text messages and other communications with Mr. Murdoch, his son James and News Corporation executives that suggested he was sympathetic to the bid.

Confronted with the cascade of supportive communications that flowed between his office and a Murdoch lobbyist — and in one case, between Mr. Hunt and James Murdoch himself — Mr. Hunt admitted that he had strongly favored the takeover but insisted that he had set aside his own bias when taking on the “quasi-judicial” decision.

Robert Jay, the lead lawyer for the inquiry, suggested that Mr. Hunt had subtly adapted the bid process to suit the Murdochs. Evidence showed that Mr. Hunt had sought to avoid potentially time-consuming and costly regulators’ assessment that would have cleared the way for him to approve the takeover by striking deals known as “undertakings in lieu” to address their concerns.

But when the phone hacking scandal erupted and Mr. Hunt’s office received 40,000 objections to elements of the proposed deal, he wrote an e-mail to an adviser that appeared to prefigure the collapse of the bid. “It feels like the world doesn’t trust the Murdochs further than they can be thrown,” he wrote.

The Hunt testimony is being closely watched in Britain for anything that might bring the scandal closer to Prime Minister David Cameron, who appointed Mr. Hunt and has himself faced questions about private discussions with Murdoch executives. The prime minister has acknowledged that he — along with senior politicians of other parties, as he has put it — had developed relationships with the Murdochs that were too close.

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Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt testified at the High Court in London on Thursday.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Cameron has until now managed to survive the worst embarrassments that have flowed in from the inquiry’s six months of forensic examination. But he is to make his own appearance before the Leveson panel, perhaps as early as mid-June, and faces the likelihood of a grilling similar to that endured by Mr. Hunt.

British commentators have described Mr. Hunt as a “firewall” for Mr. Cameron, and have questioned whether the prime minister could withstand the pressure that might fall on him if Mr. Hunt were to resign. But after Thursday’s testimony, Downing Street officials told reporters that Mr. Hunt had shown at the inquiry that he had “acted properly,” and that Mr. Cameron would not be seeking a further inquiry on whether he had breached a code of conduct for government ministers.

Lawmakers from the opposition Labour Party scoffed at the announcement. “He broke the ministerial code, he misled Parliament, and yet David Cameron is keeping him in his cabinet. It’s absolutely disgraceful,” said the party’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

Separate police inquiries into the tabloid scandal have resulted in the detentions of about 50 editors, reporters and other staff members from the Murdoch papers, and criminal charges against six. More than 150 detectives and support staff members are investigating the accusations of wrongdoing at the tabloids, which is said to have involved widespread phone hacking and bribing of public officials, including police officers.

With the criminal cases flowing from the phone hacking scandal expected to continue for months, if not years, the Leveson inquiry has sought to avoid prejudicing the criminal proceedings by steering clear of any detailed examination of the wrongdoing at the tabloids.

Instead, its focus has been on the ethical, cultural and political factors that condition British journalism and the close relationships among journalists, politicians and police officers that Mr. Cameron has described as a “cozy” world of complicity.

Mr. Hunt and Mr. Cameron, as well as other senior government officials, have denied any improper interference with the process in statements in Parliament and elsewhere. But their roles in the affair have attracted widespread criticism.

Some has come from within the governing Conservative Party, where disquiet about the handling of the BSkyB bid and a variety of other issues have fed rumblings about Mr. Cameron’s competence.

A former cabinet minister, David Mellor, regarded in some quarters as a Conservative bellwether, said this week in a broadcast interview that Mr. Hunt would probably have to resign. He said that Mr. Cameron would probably survive but had nevertheless shown himself to be “a shallow, callow sort of guy” who “can’t even get basic judgment calls right.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Official Says He Set Aside His Partiality To Murdochs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe